123 Main Street
Penticton, British Columbia,
V2A 3W1

May 25, 2011

Mr. Kleats

Central High School

123 Main Street,

Sportstown, British Columbia
V2A 1W3


Dear Mr. Kleats:

     My name is Chase Smith, I am glad that my son made it onto your basketball team, and I look forward to a year of fun games. I understand you are not only a basketball coach, but a teacher and family man as well. I appreciate the time you have taken from your already busy life to coach the team as well as read this letter. Although I do have a few concerns about the way practices are run and games are played.  
     It has come to my attention that when I watch practices you often show up a little late and the practices are disorganized. It wouldn't raise my attention if the team was ready for the NBA, but we both know that isn't true. I would like to offer my help as an assistant coach to keep practices running on time and organized.   Also during the games, some of the lesser skilled players recieve minute playing time because there is a bit more emphasis on winning than having a good time. From my experience as a little league coach I have come to learn that encouraging the players to practice certain moves and saying good job is better than yelling at them.

Sincerely,

Chase Smith

Uniformity?

The school sets a great example in classes such as health, or planning when we all make a resume with the same attributes. It almost looks like we printed it off the internet and put our name and address on it. They expect us to go out, apply and get the job that twenty of your friends applied for a few hours earlier. How can we, when every other "young adult" has the same generic resume? While one may get the job over another, it certainly doesn't help us later on when we apply somewhere else and take a picture of the resume beside us, copy it out then return and steal the job from the person who had those qualifications. They tell us "everything we need to know." Yet once we graduate, we don't know. We don't know anything.

Some schools set overly amazing examples by making you wear their uniform in order to come to school. They say uniforms make everyone equal. Yet they tell us the Commies are bad. Communism is all about students being equal with each other, but not people who are staff. Students, peasents, staff, government. I'm sensing school is a tad bit communist.

Take the Third Reich for example, school is one hell of a fascist place. We don't get to vote for our teachers, our cafeteria menu's, what we need to know more about, and we certainly don't get to start parties for our favorite teachers to run as principal. Like Hitler, school dictates when we go, what we do, who we argue with, why we learn what they scream in our ear drums, and where to place the school. We all know they strategically place the school far enough away from the good places that we decide it isn't worth going so we stay to get told where to sit. Filled with propaganda as well. If Hitler were alive, he'd be going after the school systems.

Prom is like a dictatorship. We vote on things. We set things up. We get dressed up, (everyone knows that the tie is the hardest part of prom). Then when it actually happens, we find the things we voted for were boring and not what we wanted. We should have voted on, a change of them every 10 minutes. Am I right? Just like a newly elected president should.

See how school sets us up for becoming your everyday generic peasant, a Russian Tsar, a Fascist Dictator, or a war monger leader from Northern America. We are a statistic. Another number to their graduate over drop out percentage. Most of all, school is government.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Iron Maiden.

Hear the rime of the Ancient mariner
See his eyes as he stops one of three
Mesmerises one of the wedding guests
Stay here and listen to the nightmares
of the sea.

And the music plays on, as the bride passes by
Caught by his spell and
the Mariner tells his tale.

Driven south to the land of the snow and ice
To a place where nobodies been
Through the snow fog flies on the albatross
Hailed in God's name,
hoping good luck it brings.

And the ship sails on, back to the north
Through the fog and ice and
the albatross follows on

The mariner kills the bird of good omen
His shipmates cry against what he's done
But when the fog clears, they justify him
And make themselves part of the crime.

Sailing on and on and North across the sea
Sailing on and on and North 'til all is calm.

The albatross begins with its vengeance
A terrible curse a thirst has begun
His shipmates blame the bad luck on the Mariner
About his neck, the dead bird is hung.

And the curse goes on and on and on at sea,
And the thirst goes on and on for them and me.

"Day after day, day after day,
we stuck nor breath nor motion
As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean
Water, water everywhere and
all the boards did shrink
Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink."

There, calls the Mariner,
there comes a ship over the line
But how can she sail with no wind
in her sails and no tide.

See...onward she comes
Onward she nears, out of the sun
See...she has no crew
She has no life, wait but there's two

Death and she life in Death,
they throw their dice for the crew
She wins the Mariner and he belongs to her now.
Then...crew one by one
They drop down dead, two hundred men
She...She, Life in Death,
She lets him live, her chosen one.

"One after one by the star dogged moon,
too quick for groan or sigh
each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
and cursed me with his eye
four times fifty living men
(and I heard nor sigh nor groan),
with heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
they dropped down one by one."

The curse it lives on in their eyes
The Mariner he wished he'd die
Along with the sea creatures
But they lived on, so did he.

And by the light of the moon
He prays for their beauty not doom
With heart he blesses them
God's creatures all of them too

Then the spell starts to break
The albatross falls from his neck
Sinks down like lead into the sea
Then down in falls comes the rain.

Hear the groans of the long dead seamen
See them stir and they start to rise
Bodies lifted by good spirits
None of them speak
and they're lifeless in their eyes.

And revenge is still sought, penance starts again
Cast into a trance and the nightmare carries on.

Now the curse is finally lifted
And the Mariner sights his home
Spirits go from the long dead bodies
Form their own light and
the Mariner's left alone.

And then a boat came sailing towards him
It was a joy he could not believe
The pilots boat, his son and the hermit.
Penance of life will fall onto Him.

And the ship sinks like lead into the sea
And the hermit shrieves the Mariner of his sins.

The Mariner's bound to tell of his story
To tell his tale wherever he goes
To teach God's word by his own example
That we must love all things that God made.

And the wedding guest's a sad and wiser man
And the tale goes on and on and on.
  

     Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a song that captures the story of an old sailor at a wedding who latches onto one of the guests. The guest is mesmerized by the story the sailor unfolds. A sailor of a ship kills an Albatross in hopes of bringing them good luck on the voyage, but with killing a good omen brings bad luck. The albatross has its vengeance as a cursed thirst is upon them, and windless sails cling to the ship. Suddenly a sailing ship appears, it's Life in Death who chooses the Albatross killer, while Death is given the 200 other sailors. But the curse is lifted on the sailor and he sees his port now, the mariner is made to tell the story with a moral that we should love all things God creates. The song is the best example I know of that integrates a narrative story into it."A terrible curse a thirst has begun." Isn't the best example of an internal rhyme, but it is still well hidden, almost unnoticeable. The lyrics vaguely include a ballad with the Sailor telling his story of him telling his story of the voyage to a wedding guest, but nothing before or after.

The Last Conversation.

     "Only a few more days now," remarked The White Man.

     "Yup," repeated The Black Man, "only a few more days now."

     "Have you chosen your last meal yet?" Questioned The White Man.

     "No, I don't get a choice. I'm black so I just get slop."

"I keep having nightmares of the day where I go to the chair."

"What can I do to help me sleep better one last time?" Asked The Black Man.

     "Well just try all the things you were told to do to get to sleep as a little boy," comforted The White Man, "such as: count sheep, start a dream, close your eyes, and relax."

     The Black Man agreed with, "I guess, I just don't want to die a sad mess, I want to look like my life wasn't wasted, and my crimes haven't gone unpaid."

     "You've been here longer than anyone else, you're dying for what you did, and you have given advice to youngsters to stay out of here," stated The White Man, "if you haven't paid for your crimes then I'll be astounded."

Alarms ringing in the background.

     "Well I guess it's time we go back to our cells and pray."

     The White Man agreed with "I'll be praying for you, I hope you'll have a safe trip."

Bully Utopia?

Princess Margaret Secondary School in Penticton, British Columbia has a medium sized student body with approximately 750 students attending. As bullying is somewhat of a problem everywhere, it's impossible to say bullying isn't present at this school. You can't say with complete certainty that there is no bullying at any school, anywhere, whether the school has 10 students or 5000 students. This school is different though, when you walk in, you feel comfortable almost immediately.

Everyone here seems to know their place and doesn't step out of it in case they cause some trouble. So far it seems everyone goes out of their way to keep bullying from happening. Although for every person trying to stop it, there is always someone trying to ruin the fun for everyone. While it isn't evident at first. When you take a deeper much more detailed look at the inner workings of all the students. You begin to notice there is a surprising amount of bullying. Listening in, most of it is done online, but you see a little bit of the physical and psychological battles that happen as one person thinks they are the king or queen of the school.

Slowly fadng bullying out could be a simple task thrust upon the school if they give out harsher punishments to the students who feel the need to bully others, and having monthly talks about how bullying can affect others along with a horrid story of what bullying does. Instilling fear may sound like the wrong way to go with bullying issues, but it is the only way to stop bullying altogether.

College Application.

I shook hands with Hitler, met Satan, and watched Jesus carry his crucifix, just to subliminally plant myself in history. I built my grandmother a bookshelf for her knitting pattern books, then went and painted over graffiti to do a good deed. I am the one who decides what happens in the world, you just don't know that because I don't allow anyone to know. I stole the Eiffel Tower and then rebuilt a knew one in its spot without a single eye seeing what was taking place.

I was there when the London Fire decimated half the city, I contributed to the Berlin Wall and I didn't even sing about it. I bartered metal pots for chocolate from the Mayans so I could create chocolate ice cream. I flew around the icy mountains in the Swiss Alps in a hang glider. I swim with my pet piranhas. Now it's lunch and I plop myself down to eat chicken and waffles in a field with no ants. I play hangman with a real person because I know I'm going to win every game. I stopped JFK's assassination.

Through coordinate geometry I discovered the city of Atlantis. I'm mastered at the rococo painting technique, I painted King Louis XIV in all of nine minutes. With Leonardo Da Vinci's blueprints, I created the first flying machine, and the first machine gun which was used in World War I.

Now I ask you, have you made a bookshelf for you're grandmother? I have and that shows all the qualities needed to go to this university.

Senior year, journey, world, go with the flow.

Senior year for me is the culmination of thirteen years of hard work, early mornings, late nights, and sleepovers. All the marks equalling up to how many hairs you've lost on the journey to graduation day, and the percentages meaning how much you would much rather do something fun than homework, but realized you needed to do homework. It's when being pushed into a group of people opposite from you and then expected to click with them and become best of friends all comes to an end. When knowing where to go next, why you're going there,  is thrown out the window. Now it's time we all just go with the flow and do nothing, let the world take us where it wants. Thinking you know everything is put to an impossible test. You realize the world you think you know, is not quite what it seems. No one telling us what to do, we do it for ourselves. Senior year for me is the beginning of my life, not the life that was thrust upon me for eighteen years. It's time for me to go and do what I want.